A Pacific Northwest career-finder company called Jobdango was recently fined by the city of Portland for advertisements written out in chalk. (Someone had to go clean it up.) I don't know squat about marketing--my friend Paul Dervan does--but I do know that this guerrilla marketing stuff is nauseating.

I recently spotted some graffiti posing as "clever" ad/art, splashed across the side of a couple of buildings in my northeast Portland neighborhood. The company: Converse, as in the shoes. It's amazing, really, that people can so easily convince themselves of uncool ideas, in this case the idea that defacing another person's property is somehow cool or, better still, "creative." I suppose I'm falling into Converse's trap by a.) discussing the ad strategy in the first place and b.) cutting and pasting one of the images, thus augmenting the company's overall Internet visibility, if only by a nano-ounce. After all, I'm sure some company whiz did the math and determined that the PR value of this campaign surpasses the cost of any fine(s) that Portland or other cities might levy. Still, sometimes griping feels good, and perhaps calling the company out on this garbage will at least hasten the cleanup.

In other miscellaneous news, a friend recently sent me a link to this article from the Daily Mail, about more liberal views on spelling, or at least one university lecturer's more liberal views on spelling. The rebellion, infinitesimal as it may seem, continues.